The Karaya Kid
by Naj Tunich
Summary: Parody (not comedy) of The Karate Kid. Chapter 2: Hugo prepares to become Chief.
1. Intro

**Intro - The Karaya Kid**   
  
"Where in the world have you been?" Lucia demanded the moment Hugo set foot into the tent. "Do you realize what you've done?"  
  
Hugo shrugged, trying to keep his expression blank, though her words angered him. He wasn't a kid anymore, but he certainly wasn't an old fogey. Why should he have to attend meetings? With his limited knowledge of the world around him, how could he possibly contribute? The boy turned his back on his mother, hanging his hunting knife on the rack against the wall and kicking his sandals off.  
  
The Karaya clan chief scowled at her son as he stalked toward his room. "Don't turn your back on me!" she hissed.   
  
He paused, turning slowly to face her, looking somewhat more afraid than angry now.  
  
Lucia sighed in frustration. "I have told you and told you how important this is--"  
  
"Yeah, a hundred times."  
  
"Then this makes a hundred and one." She looked at him coldly as she stepped closer. "These meetings are held but one time a season. How do you think the people of the Grasslands have survived and maintained their freedom for so long? When the leaders of our clans unite, we do so as friends, as allies."  
  
She stared hard at him, and he could not escape her gaze. "When you look into the eyes of your neighbors, you know what their hearts say. If we were to neglect the Meeting of the Clan Chiefs, then we would forget what their hearts say to us, and in time suspicions would grow. This leads to unnecessary hard feelings and war could erupt. Don't you understand? As my son, the son of a chief, you need to learn these things."  
  
Hugo looked down, ashamed now that he'd spent the afternoon childishly avoiding the meeting, trying to prove to his mother that he was old enough to make his own decisions. Instead, he realized his decision had been wrong, and that, in order to learn the ways of his people and maintain them, he would have to grow up. "But it's hard," he said quietly. "You've been so many places and seen so many things... I know nothing."  
  
"You will learn," Lucia said, her expression softening to one of motherly affection. "You will, Hugo, in time. Great things lie before you. You will be chief some day, and then it will be your turn to protect your people and our beautiful land." Smiling, she draped her arm over his shoulder and walked him to the opening of their tent, holding the cloth door open wide. "Open your eyes, my darling son! This is paradise!"  
  
(==)  
  
Later that night, as Hugo tossed and turned, trying to sleep, he thought about what his mother had told him. It made sense, somehow, but only to a small part of him. _Some day_, he thought, her words echoing back to him.  
  
He didn't know that "some day" would come so soon.  
  
(==)  
  
**My thanks to D'Artagnan (userid=57422) for suggested corrections in dialogue.**


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**   
  
The funeral was a grim one. There is nothing pleasant about a ceremony of spirit-relinquishing under normal circumstances, but such mourning as occurred after the death of the Karaya clan chief Lucia had never before been heard throughout all the Grasslands.  
  
The sun was preparing to set in the dimming violet sky as the Karaya clansmen gathered with heavy hearts to the funeral pyre. A rectangular stack of brushwood awaited its queen, and four warriors held torches at the ready at each of its corners.  
  
This was one ceremony that Hugo, son of the chief, was well-prepared for. Death was the beginning of a much greater thing to his people: the joining of a spirit to planet. There were spirits all around--in the wind, in the earth, in the water. The spirits of brave warriors were the most powerful of all, sacred and intangible. Their force brought the sun each morning and the moon each night, caused fire to burn and water to flow; their force gave the Karaya people strength against enemies and protected them from harm until the earth beckoned to them.  
  
Hugo was familiar to all of this, and with the knowledge of the ways of passing came the preparation of the ceremony that went along with it.  
  
The fifteen-year-old led the procession with his head high and his eyes straight, his face a mask to hide the painful emotion lying just beneath the surface. He walked to the beat of the sacred drum without missing a beat, the rhythm in his steps becoming one with the pounding of his heart. He was in awe when by peripheral vision he realized that his people made up the smallest portion of the mourners. It may have just been that the lizard people were so much larger that they seemed of greater number, but Hugo also recognized the garb of the peoples of Chisha, an entire brace of duck clansmen, many warrior women from Alma Kinan, an unknown group who might have been part of the Sefi clan, and even a company of knights from Camaro.  
  
A likely cause for the widespread sorrow was that Lucia was the first victim to be claimed by the sickness that had struck the Karaya village following a band of infected travelers who had passed through from Caleria. They left their plague in their wake, and when nearly a dozen Karayans had been struck by the illness, Chief Lucia had stayed by the bedsides of the sick, praying to the spirits for swift recovery and offering words of comfort and hope to their families. It was the constant exposure to the virus that finally took her life.  
  
When last Hugo had spoken with his mother, she had warned him with a raw, hoarse voice of what was to soon follow. She knew, the same as he, that the end was near. Her face was gray, hollow; her eyes dim and sunken, with deep, dark grooves cut into her face with obvious pain; her skin was thin and stretched tightly over her bones. The change had occurred in a matter of days, and within three weeks, Karaya's lovely queen was dead.  
  
His expression showing nothing of the grief he felt inside, Hugo marched a full circle around the pyre with the others in the procession following quickly behind. It wasn't until he turned the curve and led the others into the ring that he saw his mother atop the flowered bed that was to be her final resting place. Strong boards had been laced carefully together; large, bright flowers covered the ties, and finally the body of the chief placed on top. Her hands, at her stomach, were clutching a dagger, the one that had been presented to her at her coronation.  
  
Hugo nearly sobbed aloud, but restrained himself with all his might, looking at the pyre with his gaze out of focus so he wouldn't really see.  
  
There wasn't a sound as the chief's body was placed upon the platform; not a tear was shed while the village elder said a prayer in the old tongue, nor when chiefs of the other Grasslands villages each removed a flower from the garden of death.  
  
But when the four torches were raised, and each member of the Karaya clan followed Hugo's lead in taking up arms in salute, a wail rose up from the masses. The torches lit the pyre at precisely the same moment, the fire quickly encircling the chief's body. The spirits lifted the wind to howl, but naught could be heard above the screams and cries of Lucia's people, even as the other villages took up the song of passing.  
  
_Life and death make a pact within you,   
Body of the world, house of death  
I've been falling endlessly since my birth,  
I fall in myself without touching bottom  
Gather me in your eyes,  
Collect my scattered dust and reconcile my ashes  
Bind these unjoined bones,  
Blow over my being,  
Bury me deep in your earth,  
And let your silence bring peace to thought that rages against itself...  
  
Open your hand, lady of seeds that are days,  
The day is immortal, it rises and grows,  
It has just been born; its birth never ends,  
Each day is a birth, each dawn is a birth  
And I am dawning, we all are dawning,  
The sun dawns with the face of the sun...  
  
I want to go on, to go further, and cannot:  
As each moment was dropping into another  
I dreamt the dreams of dreamless stones,  
And there at the end of the years like stones  
I heard my blood, singing in its prison,  
And the sea sang with a murmur of light,  
One by one the walls gave way,  
All of the doors were broken down,  
And the sun came bursting through my forehead,  
It tore apart my closed lids,  
Cut loose my being from its wrappers,  
And pulled me out of myself to wake me  
from this animal sleep and its centuries of stone,  
and the sun's magic of mirrors revived  
  
A crystal willow, a poplar of water,  
A tall fountain the wind arches over,  
A tree deep-rooted yet standing still,  
A course of a river that turns, moves on,  
doubles back, and comes full circle,  
forever arriving...   
_  
(==)  
  
Excerpt from Octavio Paz's "Sunstone," translated by Eliot Weinberger. 


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**   
  
"You're not taking _that_ to the coronation, are you?"  
  
Hugo shrugged at Luce from where he sat cross-legged on the ground, holding his dagger up to the sun to catch its gleam, but there was only rust.  
  
Luce shook her head, clucking her tongue like a disapproving mother.  
  
_Mother..._  
  
"Why don't you go talk to Beecham and see if he can't help you get it to shine?"  
  
Hugo nodded, barely listening as he stared at the blade, finally letting his hand fall slowly into his lap.  
  
Luce sighed, closing her eyes for a moment before joining him, taking a seat on the warm grass. "You're going to do fine, you know."  
  
"I don't know anything about being a chief. I'm only fifte--"  
  
"You'll be _sixteen_ tomorrow," Luce smiled, draping an arm around his shoulders and holding him to her chest. "You're a man now, and your mother would be proud. _I'm_ proud."  
  
Normally one to shy away from being held, Hugo now let himself relax in his mother's old friend. "But...what if I--"  
  
"Don't worry, Hugo." Luce turned to the side to grip his shoulders and give him a gentle shake. "I have faith in you. The spirits choose the guardian of our people: they have chosen _you_."  
  
(==)  
  
Feeling at least resigned to his purpose, if not enthused, Hugo wandered over to Beecham's tent. As a young child he'd avoided the area surrounding the old man's hovel; he and his friends had been weary of its darkness and its stench, not to mention the crazy old man who occupied the space. The young man supposed he had grown out of that fear, and no longer believed the stories of the tent having a skull-lined interior, but he felt his pulse quicken as he stiffly approached.  
  
The tent flap was open, and when Hugo neared the entrance he could already smell something quite rancid. _Heads!_ his mind gasped, but he gave himself a rough mental shake, and called inside.  
  
"Hello!" By the afternoon sunlight that spilled into the dim shelter, Hugo could make out a figure sitting in the shadows. "Are you Beecham?"  
  
"....Yes."  
  
The reply was practically a growl.  
  
"I'm Hugo, Chief--Lucia's son." The boy took a step into the tent. "I need help cleaning my dagger." He laughed, nervously. "There's a lot of rust on it."  
  
Silence.  
  
Hugo took another step inside, the stench almost overpowering, even with fresh air behind him. "Can you take care of it?"  
  
"....Yes."  
  
"....Can you tell me when?"  
  
"When, what?"  
  
Hugo frowned, getting irritated. "When are you going to take care of my coronation dagger?"  
  
"....After."  
  
"After what?"  
  
"After after."  
  
Hugo waited a few minutes more, staring at the shadowy figure of the old man, who sat silently and still, as though in meditation. Then he turned with an exhasperated sigh and stalked out. _He really is mad_, he thought.  
  
And his blade was still rusted. Now what was he to do?  
  
(==)  
  
Hugo was still scrubbing and wiping at the dagger that night when he heard the timid sound of someone clearing his throat. He looked up from his task, the sweat dripping from his bangs glistening in the firelight.  
  
"Come on in, Lulu," he welcomed his friend, returning immediately to his task.  
  
Lulu, a quiet boy who was a little smaller in stature than Hugo, crept slowly into the large tent, having a seat on the floor a little away from his friend. He hadn't been here for a visit since before Lucia had died; it felt strange to do so now.  
  
"So you didn't let Beecham clean your knife up, after all." He sounded relieved.  
  
"What, that old geezer? No way. He's crazy."  
  
"I know. I didn't think you'd be dumb enough to take it to him. I was just a little worried when my mom told me she'd suggested it to you."  
  
Hugo sighed, giving up his futile task and tossing the dagger and rag to the floor. "Actually, I asked him, but he said he was busy."  
  
"Busy?" Lulu stared at his friend with wide eyes. "Too busy to prepare the most sacred part of the ceremony for the coronation of the chief? He _must_ be insane!"  
  
"Yeah, well.... Maybe I can ask somebody else."  
  
Lulu frowned. "....Who?"  
  
The two friends looked at each other, each feeling a little helpless. "This would be so much easier if my mother were here," Hugo sighed a little sadly.  
  
"She is," Lulu murmured. "She's here with you, Hugo. Didn't she say she would be? In the wind, in the water, in the earth--you can feel her, the same as I, the same as we all can."  
  
Hugo closed his eyes, listening to the crackle of the wood in the fire. He felt the heat of the flames, could see them through his shut lids. He felt power there, an overwhelming power that he knew could burn him.  
  
"I feel nothing!" he sneered. "My mother is dead. And I am alone."  
  
When the young man rose from his seat on the floor and disappeared into the back of his home, Lulu didn't follow. He didn't leave immediately, either. But by the time dawn's first rays came peeking through the clouds, he realized that the blade just wasn't going to get any shinier or any sharper with his kind of help. 


End file.
